Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology to obtain object information based on a photoacoustic wave generated by irradiation of light to an object.
Description of the Related Art
Photo acoustic imaging (PAI) in an optical imaging technique developed based on the photoacoustic effect. In photo acoustic imaging, for example, an object such as a living body is irradiated with pulsed light and a light absorber such as a blood vessel absorbs energy of the pulsed light to generate a photoacoustic wave. An acoustic wave detecting unit detects the photoacoustic wave generated by the photoacoustic effect. Then, a detection signal output from the acoustic wave detecting unit is analyzed by image processing, for example, and object information is obtained.
As an example of photo acoustic imaging, Non-Patent Document 1 entitled “Universal back-projection algorithm for photoacoustic computed tomography”, disclosed by Xu et al., PHYSICAL REVIEW E 71,016706 (2005), discloses obtaining initial sound pressure distribution as the object information by applying universal back-projection reconstruction processing (hereinafter, referred to as “UBP processing”) to the detection signal of the photoacoustic wave.